


Sleeping Beauty?

by housebyside



Category: Hello From the Magic Tavern (Podcast)
Genre: Curse Breaking, Curses, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:34:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26943742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/housebyside/pseuds/housebyside
Summary: Typically, in stories like this, a maiden, or a princess, is cursed to an eternal sleep and her true love kisses her and she wakes up and they get married. Some of that happens in this story. Some of it sort of happens.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Sleeping Beauty?

**Author's Note:**

> Hello. Uh. I'm back with my pirate curse where I write a fanfic for some random fandom every year or so ensuring no returning audience or widespread appeal. I don't know why. Anyway people should write more Magic Tavern fanfic. I don't know what else to say. I guess this takes place in season three before they head to the school if that makes sense in the timeline. Or maybe it doesn't. Enjoy anyway.

So maybe going to a creepy abandoned castle to find pages of the book of sight was a bad idea. However, Arnie thought he made at least three good references to the tv show Castle and he’d have to try them out once they started recording again, so it could’ve been worth it. 

It was the whole Usidore falling into some kind of magical, or whatever, eternal, or whatever, sleep thing that kind of put a damper on the evening.  
When they found the stone bed with funky writing underneath it, it seemed like a fun thing to dare Usidore to lay down on to see what it was all about. 

“Well.” Chunt crossed his badger arms. “It’s a curse.”

“What?” Arnie’s voice hit a high note.

“Don’t you have curses on earth?”

“I mean sort of.” Arnie crossed his arms mimicking the shapeshifter. “But not like this. And this kind of curse is like a fairytale thing. You know, Sleeping Beauty?”

“Oh you have sleeping beauty too?” Chunt's eyes lit up as he pushed Usidore’s arm to the side and sat down beside his incredibly still form. 

Arnie suddenly felt weary. “What does that mean here?

“It’s a drink you make for someone you love to help them sleep. Sleeping Beau Tea. Does that make sense?” 

“That’s a stretch,” Arnie muttered. 

“Anyway, I don’t know what Sleeping Beau Tea has to do with Usidore. We need him to wake up.”

Arnie pushed Usidore’s legs to the side and sat down on the stone bed next to Chunt, rested his elbows on his knees, and his head in his hands. 

They sat in silence for a moment and looked around at the crumbling castle. This room had no evidence, besides the stone bed, what it was used for. The ceiling was caved in letting in the soft light of early evening. Vines devoured the stone walls and weeds tougher than stone pushed through the floor. Soon it would all be covered in darkness. 

“I give up,” Arnie said.

“Arnie, we can’t give up yet. Who could we get to be the third host in such short notice!” Chunt stood up and shook Arnie’s arm.

“Usidore’s the magic one, you’re the badger one, and I’m the good looking, smart, powerful podcast host. We can’t solve magic problems without the magic one.”

“Oof, powerful?”

Arnie ignored that and kept going, “The best we can hope for is a guest to show up for us to interview and hope they happen to know how to break this curse.”

“Well how does your world’s sleeping beauty work?”

“Um—”

There was a sudden crash as a certain wizard in a blood red robe stomped into the castle.

“Jyn'Leeviya!” Chunt called.

“Oh thank god,” Arnie murmured at the same time.

She glared as she stormed into the room, quite literally as the previous stale air in the room started to get whipped up and leaves from outside blew in and swirled and danced around her. 

“What have you done?”

“Nothing!” Both boys said at the same time with varying degrees of certainty. 

“I felt a disturbance. A magical disturbance. I thought it could have been anything, but then a bird fell dead at my feet.”

“Gross,” Chunt said with some amount of reverence. 

“Oh so you figured that Usidore…” Arnie began.

“That some awful fate had befallen my beloved yes.” She interrupted “I was busy making sweet love to a wood nymph and I had to drop everything to come here as quickly as I did.”

“So did the bird fall on the nymph’s, y’know, dick.”

“Yes it did indeed fall on his penis.” Jyn'Leeviya nodded severely.

“So when you said it fell at your feet,” Arnie began once again.

“Enough!” Her voice echoed off the dark stone walls. “What has happened to Usidore?”

“He got cursed.” Chunt gestured to the sleeping form of Usidore. It didn’t even look like he was breathing. 

Jyn'Leeviya rushed forward and pushed the two off of the stone bed. “Oh Usidore you fool.”

“Can you fix it?” Arnie asked.

“Of course I can.” She pointed her nose up in the air. “I am a great wizard. And, even if I wasn’t, I would be able to break the curse anyway.” Her tone went from fury to mischievous with no real transition between.

“Why?” Chunt dared to ask.

“Can none of you dolts read the language printed at the bottom of this cursed stone?”

“No,” Arnie admitted. “Usidore said he could but that he didn’t want to, which made me think he didn’t actually know how.”

She rolled her eyes. “Typical. How could I expect all of you to know anything about the language of love, Seattle.”

“Seattle?”

“Oh yeah duh.” Chunt hit the top of his head. “Arnie, in Foon there’s a mystical language only a few can read called Seattle. It must have something to do with the curse. Jyn'Leeviya, does it say how Usidore can become sleepless in Seattle?”

“You’ve Got Mail?” Arnie said sheepishly.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Chunt gave him a look.

“Nevermind,” Arnie sighed.

“The text reads that the curse can be broken by true love’s kiss.” Jyn’Leeviya bushed a few of Usidore’s scraggly hairs from his forehead. “And luckily I have arrived.” She leaned forward and pressed a rather too intimate kiss into Usidore’s lips. Both Chunt and Arnie scrunched up their faces and looked away. 

“There!” She exclaimed and they turned back.

There was a faint glow that seemed to flicker like a shitty LED bulb and then disappeared.

“That’s not good,” Chunt whispered.

“Usidore If you were not already damned,” Jyn'Leeviya intoned her voice harsh like thunder and booming just as loud. The wind picked up again as she turned around on her feet and started leaving the castle.

“Where are you going?” Arnie called out after her.

She spared him a glance, her eyes striking like a hot iron. “I’m going to scour Foon for his true love and drag them here to break the curse so I can kill them both.”

With that, she left, the wind going with her.

“You think it might be...” Chunt sucked in a breath through his teeth.

“Germ?” Arnie finished for him. “Maybe. But we have no idea where she is. And I don’t think I want Jyn'Leeviya to kill her.”

“Yeah,” Chunt sighed and sat back down next to Usidore. Arnie joined him and glanced back at Usidore. It was honestly kind of depressing.

“You never got to finish Arnie, do you think your sleeping beauty might help?”

“Ooh, buddy.” Arnie shook his head. “In that the curse was broken by true love’s kiss too.”

“Damn.”

“I should have said French Kiss,” Arnie said with a sigh.

“So what do we do now?” Chunt asked. “Do we just leave him here? Drag him around?”

Arnie immediately started shaking his head. “I don’t think we can carry him, you’re too short.”

“And you can’t lift your arms above your side.”

“Yeah. Yeah.” Arnie said defeatedly. “I guess we have to leave him. Maybe we can come back later if we find Germ?”

“We should find a glass case to put over him.”

“Why?”

“I just thought it would be fun.”

“We should make our way back to the town before night falls,” Arnie said.

They both stood up, but instead of walking off they stood to the side and looked down at their friend.

“At least he’s quiet for once?” Chunt tried.  


Arnie shook his head.

“Yeah. I don’t like it either.”

“Let’s go Chunt.”

“I don’t want to leave on that,” Chunt said, suddenly shaking with energy. “Let’s just pretend he’s sleeping.”

“Chunt, he is.”

“Not like that. Let’s pretend we are just leaving him for the night. That’ll make me feel better. Let’s, I don’t know, get him a blanket and a pillow and tell him goodnight.”

“So you don’t want a glass case anymore?”

“I mean if we come across one.”

It didn’t take too long to head back to the neighboring town’s inn, liberating a ratty blanket and pillow from an unoccupied room and to get back to the castle as the sun began to set.

“There.” Chunt said as they draped the blanket over the stone, obscuring the ancient words written in Seattle. “It looks like he’s taking a nap.”

“Doesn’t he normally sleep standing up or something? Or, or floating?” Arnie asked.

“Fuck, I don’t remember, just let me have this.”

“Okay. Let’s tell him goodnight.” 

“How do you tell people goodnight on earth?” Chunt asked.

“Well, I would kiss my wife and daughter and wish them good dreams and that bed bugs wouldn’t bite. It’s a pretty common thing to do at least where I’m from.”

“Are bed bugs a big problem where you come from?”

“Not really?”

“You kiss before bed?”

“We kiss other times too, it’s just, well. I guess I never thought about it. Maybe it is weird.”

“Well get going.”

“What?”

“Kiss him goodnight,” Chunt insisted.

“Chunt.”

“Arnie, we might never see him ever again, especially if Jyn'Leeviya finds his true love and kills him. It’s the least we can do.”

Successfully guitled, Arnie leaned forward. The hair on Usidore’s forehead had been messed back up by the whipping wind so he pushed the gray strands aside again. “Goodnight Usidore,” Arnie said with a tightness in his throat he’d never admit to anyone, and pressed a quick kiss to his forehead. “Don’t let the bed bugs bite.”

He stood back up and watched as Chunt took Usidore’s still hand. “Goodnight Usidore.” He pressed his badger nose to the back of his hand and then kissed it.  


Suddenly, the dark chamber lit only by the moon began to glow.

“What the hell?” Arnie looked up as each stone in the room began to emit a light not unlike starlight. 

Chunt jumped into Arnie’s arms and held onto his head as the room shook. The light began to form over Usidore. It seemed to gather over his forehead and hand. After a moment, it seemed to seep into Usidore’s skin and once again the room was dark.

“Wha-er-er-er, what happened?” Usidore sputted as he sat up and tossed the blanket to the side. He looked up at Arnie and Chunt holding each other looking at him with wide eyes. “And why are you staring at me?”

“Usidore!” Chunt jumped from Arnie to Usidore and held tight around his shoulders.

“It’s nice to see you too Chunt. But could you please tell me what is going on?”

“We’ll tell you later big guy,” Arnie said with a grin he couldn’t hide.

Later that night, at the inn, while Usidore was out doing who knew what since he didn’t feel tired for good reason, Arnie and Chunt couldn’t quite fall asleep yet.

“You don’t think…” Arnie said hesitantly.

“No. No. It must have taken a while for Jyn'Leeviya’s kiss to kick in.”  


“I guess you’re right.” 

“He’s our friend,” Chunt said with certainty.

“Yeah. He is.”

A day later the empty castle was met with a visitor once again. 

“Boys!” Jyn'Leeviya’s voice bounced through the empty castle walls. She retraced her steps and made it back to the stone bed. She tilted her head at the empty chamber. She moved to the stone bed and picked up a blanket and pillow she hadn’t seen yesterday with the tips of her fingers, examining them before throwing them to the side. 

“I guess they figured it out.” She shrugged and with a wave of her hand, destroyed the bed so no one would fall to the curse again. 

The words written in Seattle crumbled, the words she had mistranslated the day before, but with a cooler head she realized what they actually said. 

“I wonder where they were able to find true loves kiss, whatever that means,” she muttered to herself and then went on her way feeling in every step she took the love in every plant, animal, and person. She felt love of all types in her every breath; the love between lovers, the love between family, and the love between friends.

**Author's Note:**

> A friendship kiss.............a gentle friendship kiss is all I want.


End file.
